CHAPTER XXI.NEWS FROM JACK.

“Paul,” Clarice said, when they were down on the avenue, and she was leaning on his arm, “I’ve had a letter from Jack, and where do you think he is?”

“Have no idea. He is likely to turn up anywhere,”Paul replied, and Clarice continued: “Well, you would never guess, and I may as well tell you. He is at Samona, of all places in the world.”

“Samona? Where’s that?” Paul asked, not at once associating it with Elithe’s home in Montana.

“Don’t pretend you don’t know that Samona is where that Hansford girl lives,” Clarice rejoined, irritably.

It was very seldom that Paul showed any resentment at what she said or did. To-night, however, he was a good deal annoyed at her treatment of Elithe, and he asked her, “Why do you call her ‘that Hansford girl?’ Why not say Elithe?”

“Well, Elithe, then, if it suits you better,” Clarice replied. “Her father, you know, lives in Samona,—preaches there, and in some unaccountable way Jack has stumbled upon the place, and says he likes it very much, and the Hansfords, too. Wants me to be polite to Elithe, because they have been kind to him. He can’t have seenher, as he has only been there two weeks, I judge from his letter. But that is long enough to hear from the Hansfords that we are going to be married, and he says that he is coming.”

“Well,” Paul said, “suppose he does?”

It did not matter to him personally whether Jack came or not, and he could not quite understand Clarice’s aversion to having him present at her bridal. It would be very annoying, of course, if he were intoxicated and noisy, but he did not believe he would be. He was naturally a gentleman. He could surely keep sober for one day, and he said so to Clarice.

“You don’t know him as he is now,” she said. “It takes so little to make him perfectly wild, and I should die of mortification. I think he did enough when he gambled away the money I entrusted to him without disgracing memore. It makes mamma quite ill to think of having him here. She says she positively cannot, and I wish you’d write and tell him not to come. No, not exactly that, perhaps, but make as if we didn’t expect him, he is so far away and all that. You can do it nicely.”

Paul didn’t think he could, or would. Jack was sure to see through a ruse of that sort, and he did not want to hurt his feelings. “Let him alone and he will stay where he is,” he said. “Poke him up and he’s sure to come.”

This reasoning did not please Clarice, who had more on her mind.

“If Elithe had minded her business he would have known nothing about it,” she said.

“What has Elithe to do with it?” Paul asked in some surprise, and Clarice replied, “Wrote home about the grand wedding which she and her aunt were to attend. How did she know she would be invited?”

“She knew her aunt was to be, and naturally thought she would not be left out,” Paul answered.

“Which she will! I’ve made up my mind to that! It isn’t necessary to ask a whole family. One member is enough,” Clarice said so viciously that Paul stopped short in his walk and looked at her.

“Do you mean what you say?” he asked, and Clarice replied, “Yes, I do mean it! I don’t like the girl, with her pussy cat ways. I’ve never liked her, and you’ve made such a fuss over her ever since she came. Calling there every day, I hear, teaching her to swim, and bringing her to the tennis court. You’ll be wanting her to join next, but I’ll black-ball her,—see if I don’t.”

All Clarice’s rancor and jealousy of Elithe had come to the surface, making her forget herself entirely and saythings at which Paul looked aghast. He had borne a good deal that day from her, and this attack on Elithe was too much.

“Clarice,” he said, in a voice she had never heard from him before, “you astonish me. Are you jealous of Elithe?”

“Jealous of Elithe!” Clarice repeated with the utmost scorn. “How can I be jealous of one so far my——” she did not say “inferior,” for something in Paul’s eyes checked her, and she added, “I tell you I don’t like her, and I won’t have her invited. I can surely do as I please about that. I have no master yet.”

She was very angry, and Paul was angry, too, and answered hotly that Elithe would be invited, as he should do it himself. It was their first real quarrel, and they kept it up until they reached the Percy cottage, where Clarice, alarmed at Paul’s quiet, determined manner, which meant more than fierce, noisy passion, broke down and began to cry, wishing she had died before Paul ceased to care for her,—wishing she had never seen Elithe, and ending by saying she didn’t care who was invited to the wedding, and that she had been unreasonable and foolish and was sorry. Before she reached this point Paul’s anger had melted, and the quarrel was made up in every possible way. He, however, insisted that he could not write to Jack and that it was better to let him come, and take the chance of good or bad behavior. He did not ask to see Jack’s letter, nor did Clarice offer to show it to him, but after he had gone and she was alone in her room she read it again, softening and hardening at intervals, and not knowing whether she were more angry at Elithe or Jack for the latter’s proposed visit to Oak City. The letter was as follows:

“Samona, Montana, July ——, 18——.

“Dear Sister:

“I have written you twice and had no answer, and I suppose you think me a greater scamp than when you used to tell me I was one every day of my life. Well, I own up. I was a scamp to use your money, but I really had to or be arrested. I shall pay it back, honor bright. I’m going into the mining business; am prospecting now in or near Samona, a right smart little town, as they say here at the West. I’ve been here two weeks or more, and have made the acquaintance of the Rev. Mr. Hansford, nephew of that cranky woman in Oak City who used to hold me in such high esteem. I’m quite hand in glove with the rector and his family and pass for a respectable man. His daughter is visiting his aunt, he tells me. Do you know her? I hope your infernal pride has not kept you from calling upon her. Her father is very kind to me, and I wish you’d be polite to her. Mr. Hansford is a good deal of a man, too. Ought to have a better parish than this, though what the miners would do without him I don’t know. They fairly worship him. Their daughter has written them of a wedding she expects to attend in August and to which everybody, I should think, is to be bidden except your scapegrace brother. Him you haven’t even told of your engagement. It is true you haven’t known exactly my whereabouts since I failed to pay. But a letter sent to Denver is sure to reach me some time. I got the one blowing me up for my rascality, and have heard nothing since of you until news of your approaching marriage came to me through the Rev. Mr. Hansford, or rather his son Rob, who told me that Elithe expected to attend a grand wedding. I did not tell him I had ever heard of you. Shame that I, your brother, should be so much a stranger to yourplans, kept me silent. I deserve your reticence, of course, but I shall be at your wedding. There are certain reasons why I very much wish to visit Oak City, and the same reasons make me wish to be on good terms with you and mother. Can’t we let bygones be bygones, and begin again? Suppose we try. I don’t know when you may expect me, but I am coming. Very truly,

JACK.”

“If you answer, direct to Denver, as I may be there. If I am not, it will be forwarded to me here.”

This was not a bad letter, and if Jack had not said he was coming to her wedding Clarice might have been glad to have heard from him, especially as he promised payment of her money. Her objections to having him in Oak City seemed unreasonable and still were not without some cause. It took so little to affect him, and he was so violent and quarrelsome when upset, and she had been so often mortified that she dreaded a recurrence of what might, and probably would, happen if he came. No matter how stringent the laws might be, he managed to evade them and always had the poison with him.

“I have been free from this horror so long that I cannot meet it again,” Clarice thought, as she folded the letter and felt her anger kindling again against Elithe, who had written to Samona of the wedding.

She knew this was unjust, but she was irritated and jealous, and smarting from her recent quarrel with Paul, for which Elithe was to blame.

“I wish she had never come to Oak City, and, like her aunt, I feel it in my bones that she is my evil star,” she thought.

Then she began to wonder why Jack wished particularlyto come to Oak City, and why for the same reason he wished to be on good terms with his family.

“Elithe can have nothing to do with that. He has never seen her. If he had I might imagine all sorts of complications,” she thought, and was still cogitating on the subject when her mother joined her and the two talked up the matter together, Mrs. Percy evincing more dislike to Jack’s coming than Clarice herself.

Between the brother and sister there was some affection; between the stepmother and stepson, none, or at most very little. Mrs. Percy had suffered so much from Jack’s habits that she shrank from putting herself in the way of them again.

“He is safe in Montana; let him stay there, and write him such a letter as will keep him there,” she said.

This, however, was not so easy a task, and Clarice sat up half the night to accomplish it. Three different copies she wrote and three times tore them up; then wrote at last that she was very glad to hear from him (which was not true) and glad that he intended to refund her money (which was true). She was to be married in August, and had she known where a letter would find him she should have written to him, of course. This was her second lie, but, being fairly under way, she did not hesitate to tell another and say that the grand affair of which he had heard was a mistake. She was to be married quietly, with a few friends present, and it was hardly worth his coming so far for so small a matter. When the invitations were out she should send him one and hoped to see him on her wedding trip, as they were going to the Pacific coast by way of Helena and should stop at Samona if he were there, as she trusted he would be. He could take her through the mines and the cañons. Paul would enjoy it so much. She made nomention of Elithe except to say she had met her two or three times. She closed with “Yours affectionately till I meet you in Samona. Will let you know when to expect us.

CLARICE PERCY.”

That trip to the Pacific by way of Helena was born in her brain as she wrote. They had talked of the Canadian route to Victoria and then by steamer to San Francisco, with no thought of Helena or Samona. But they might change their minds and call on Jack if he proved quiescent and staid where he was. She could easily persuade Paul to go wherever she wished to go. On the whole, she was rather pleased with her effort, and had not told a very big falsehood unless it were with regard to the quiet wedding with a few friends.

“And it is to be quiet compared with what I meant to have had in Washington, and of those who will attend only a few will be real friends; the rest will be here to see and be seen and criticise,” she said to herself, trying to ease her conscience as she folded and directed the letter which was to bear so bitter fruit.

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